City of Saskatoon discusses possible $6.8-million deficit

The City of Saskatoon is projecting a $6.8 million “unfavourable variance” from the city’s budget.

That’s according to a report given at Monday’s Saskatoon city council meeting, where chief financial officer Clae Hack said the city made money in some areas, but also had some unanticipated costs.

“These positive gains are offset by most notably higher than anticipated fuel prices, which had a $3.5-million impact on the city budget including utilities, (and) a $3-million unfavourable variance in the snow and ice service line due to high snow accumulation in the first half of 2022,” said Hack.

He added that various other areas like fines and penalties and leisure centres failed to meet budget.

It was also noted that $13.8 million was supporting the city’s budget from one-time COVID-19 funding, and the city would only receive $10 million in COVID-19 funding for 2023, with no supportive funding slated for 2024.

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Mayor Charlie Clark said some other funding is still set aside as a cushion.

“I know we don’t want to overly rely on this, but the other note that we have is $6.5 million at this time in the fiscal stabilization reserve,” said Clark.

He added that funding allows the city to navigate a little bit through this challenging year, and that property taxes won’t need to rise to offset these overages.

Coun. Bev Dubois was concerned about no COVID-19 funding in 2024, and asked Hack if that’s been discussed yet.

“For our next two-year budget cycle we haven’t identified any one-time funding, so it’ll be a little bit of a fresh look at the budget, where we’re at in terms of our COVID recovery, and what the implications of that will be,” said Hack.

It was noted that these variances didn’t catch the city completely off guard, and that challenges with the budget have been expected for this year, as well as the coming years.

Another report on where the city sits with the budget will be given in November, but the report said that the structural deficit risk will need to be resolved to prevent year-over-year budget deficits.

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